Extreme Denial (21 page)

“I asked you if you were holding anything back. You said you’d told me everything you could think of.” Esperanza’s breathing was strident.

“That’s right.”

“Well, you ought to see a doctor—you’re having serious memory problems,” Esperanza said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have overlooked mentioning something as important as your connection with the FBI.”

“The FBI?” Decker asked in genuine surprise.

“Damn it, are you also having hearing problems? Yeah! The FBI! The head of the Santa Fe bureau called me an hour ago and said he wanted to have a little chat. What could he possibly have in mind? I wondered. Something to do with Los Alamos or the Sandia labs? A national security problem? Or maybe an interstate crime spree? So imagine my surprise when I met him at his office and he started talking about the attack on your house.”

Decker didn’t trust himself to speak.

“It’s a federal matter now—did you know that?
Federal.
Why, I could barely keep my mouth from hanging open when he told me all about what happened last night. He knew details only Sanchez and I and a few other policemen know. How the hell did he get that information? It’s not like he
asked
about last night, sort of professional curiosity. He didn’t need to ask. He
told
me. And then he told me something else— that the FBI would appreciate it if I let them handle the case from now on.”

Decker remained still, fearing that any reaction he made would cause Esperanza to become more agitated.

“The attack on your house involves extremely sensitive matters, I was informed. Information about the FBI’s interest in the attack is passed out on a need-to-know basis and I do not need to know, I was assured. If I persisted in remaining attached to the case, I would cause untold harm, I was warned.” Esperanza’s eyes were ablaze with anger. “Fine, I said. I mean, hey, I wouldn’t want to cause untold harm. God forbid. I’m as good a team player as the next man. My hands are off the case.” Esperanza stalked toward Decker. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t nose around
un
officially, and it certainly doesn’t mean I can’t demand a private explanation from you! Who the hell
are
you? What really happened last night? Why didn’t you keep me from making a fool of myself by telling me from the start to go talk to the FBI?”

WHUMP.

With a roar, the house shook.

12

Decker and Esperanza frowned at each other as a deafening rumble shuddered through them.

“What the—” Windows rattled. Dishes clattered. Decker felt a change in air pressure, as if cotton batting had been pushed into his ears.

“Something blew up!” Esperanza said. “It came from—”

“Down the street! Jesus, you don’t suppose.” Decker lunged toward the front door and yanked it open just as Sanchez, who had been waiting outside, ran into the courtyard.

“The house next door!” Sanchez said, pointing, agitated.
“It
—”

Another roar shook them, the rumbling shock wave of a second explosion knocking Decker off balance. “Beth!” Regaining his footing, he charged past Sanchez, through the open gate, and into the driveway. To his right, above the piñons and junipers that shielded Beth’s house, black smoke billowed. Wreckage cascaded. Even from a hundred yards away, Decker heard the whoosh of flames.

“
Beth!
” Vaguely aware that Esperanza and Sanchez were next to him, Decker raced to help her. He ignored the police car. He ignored the road. His throat raw from screaming Beth’s name, he chose the most direct route, charged to the right, crossed his driveway, and scrambled among piñon trees.

“BETH!” Branches scraped his arms. Sand crunched beneath his shoes. Esperanza shouted to him. But all Decker really heard was the fierce rush of his breathing as he swerved around a farther tree, the flames and dark smoke looming closer in front of him.

As the trees ended, he reached a waist-high wooden fence, gripped a post, vaulted a rail, and landed on Beth’s property. The fiery, smoke-obscured wreckage of the house was spread before him. The bitter stench of burning wood surged into his nostrils, searing his throat and lungs, making him cough.

“
BETH!
” The whoosh of the flames was so loud that he couldn’t hear himself scream her name. Fractured adobe bricks were strewn everywhere. He stumbled over them. Smoke stung his eyes. Abruptly a breeze caused the smoke to shift, showing him that not all of the house was on fire. A corner section at the back had not yet been engulfed. Beth’s bedroom was in that section.

Esperanza grasped his shoulder, trying to stop him. Decker shoved his hand away and rushed toward the back. He squirmed over a waist-high wall, crossed a wreckage-littered patio, and reached one of the bedroom windows. The force of the explosions had blown the glass out, leaving jagged edges that he broke off with a chunk of adobe he found at his feet.

The effort made him breathe hoarsely. As smoke billowed out, he swallowed some of it, strained to control his coughing, and peered through the window. “Beth!” Again, Esperanza grabbed him. Again, Decker shoved him away.

“Leave me alone!” Decker screamed. “Beth needs me!” He pulled himself through the window, tumbled to the floor, and banged his shoulder on more wreckage. Smoke surrounded him. He lurched toward the bed but found it empty. Coughing more violently, he groped along the floor, hoping to find Beth if she had collapsed. He felt his way toward the bathroom, bumped against the closed door, and became excited by the thought that Beth had taken shelter there, but when he tugged the door open, he had a heart-sinking chance, before the smoke swept in, to see that the bathroom’s tub and shower stall were empty.

His vision blurred. He felt heat and recoiled from flames that filled the bedroom doorway. At the same time, he was pressed down by the force of other flames that roared from the ceiling. He fell to the floor and crawled, struggling to breathe. He reached the window, fought to stand, and shoved his head through the opening, trying to pull himself outside. Something crashed behind him. Heat swept over his legs. At once something else crashed. Beams must be falling, he thought in dismay. The roof’s about to collapse. Heat pressed against his hips. Frantic, he pulled and pushed and fell outward through the window.

Hands grabbed him, dragging him fiercely over wreckage as flames followed Decker through the window. The hands belonged to Esperanza, who clutched Decker’s jacket, jerked him to his feet, and shoved him over the waist-high wall.

Decker felt weightless. Immediately he landed hard on the opposite side of the wall, rolled, and struck the base of a piñon tree. Esperanza dropped next to him, pursued by flames that ignited the tree. As the branches crackled, fire erupting, Esperanza dragged Decker farther away.

Another tree burst into flames.

“We have to keep going!” Esperanza shouted.

Decker stared back at the house. The smoke-spewing wreckage shimmered from the intense heat. “Beth’s in there! ““There’s nothing more you can do to help her! We have to get farther away!”

Listing, Decker fought to get air in his lungs. He stifled the urge to vomit and staggered with Esperanza through smoke down the treed slope at the rear of Beth’s house. Again, he stared back at the inferno. “Christ, what am I going to do?
Beth!”
he kept screaming. “BETH!”

SIX

—————

1

Decker sat numbly on the hard-packed dirt of Camino Lindo, his back against the right-rear wheel of a paramedic truck, breathing through an oxygen mask. The gas was dry and bitter, or maybe the bitterness was because of the smoke he had inhaled—he didn’t know. He heard the oxygen hiss from a tank beside him, a paramedic checking the pressure gauge on top. He heard the rumble of engines, lire trucks, police cars, other emergency vehicles. He heard firemen shouting to one another as they sprayed water from numerous hoses onto the smoking wreckage of Beth’s house.

My fault, he thought. All my fault.

He must have said it out loud, because the paramedic asked, “What?” The man frowned with concern and took the mask from Decker’s face. “Are you all right? Do you think you’re going to throw up?”

Decker shook his head, the movement aggravating a monumental headache, making him wince.

“What were you trying to tell us?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Esperanza said next to him. “You said, ‘My fault. All my fault.’ “ The detective’s grime-covered face had an oval impression around his nose and mouth from an oxygen mask that he had taken away. “Don’t blame yourself. This isn’t your fault. You couldn’t have anticipated this.”

“Bullshit. I was worried she might have been in danger because she was close to me.” Decker spat, his phlegm specked with soot. “I never should have let her go home. Damn it, I never should have—”

“Hold still,” the paramedic said. He had pushed up Decker’s pants legs and was examining the skin of his calves. “You’re lucky. The fire scorched your pants but didn’t set them on fire. The hair on your legs is singed. And on your arms, your head. Another few seconds in there and ... I’m not sure I would have been as brave.”

Decker’s tone was full of self-ridicule. “Brave. Like hell. I didn’t save her.”

“But you nearly got killed trying. You did everything you could,” Esperanza emphasized.

“Everything?” Decker coughed deeply, painfully. “If I’d been thinking, I would have insisted she stay under guard at the hospital.”

“Here, drink this,” the paramedic said.

Decker sipped from a bottle of water. Drops of liquid rolled down his chin, leaving streaks in the soot on his face. “I should have anticipated how easy it would be for them to get into
her
house while everyone was watching
my
house. If I’d gone inside when we brought her home, the explosions would have gotten both of us.”

Esperanza’s dark brown eyes became somber; what Decker had said troubled him. About to respond, he was distracted by the wailing sirens of another police car and a fire truck arriving on the scene.

Decker sipped more water, then stared toward the chaos of firemen hosing the rubble. “Jesus.” He dropped the water bottle and raised his hands to his face. His shoulders heaved painfully as tears welled from his eyes. He felt as if he was being choked. Grief cramped his chest. “Oh, Jesus, Beth, what am I going to do without you?”

He felt Esperanza’s arm around him.

“All my fault. All my damned fault,” Decker said through his tears.

He heard an ambulance attendant whisper, “We’d better get him to the hospital.”

“No!” Decker’s voice was strained. “I want to stay and help find the bastards who did this!”

“How do you suppose they set off the bombs?” Esperanza asked.

“What?” Bewilderment clouded Decker’s sensations. He tried to focus on Esperanza’s question. Concentrate, he told himself. Get control. You can’t find whoever did this if you’re hysterical. “Some kind of remote device.”

“Electronic detonators set off by a radio signal.”

“Yes.” Decker wiped tears from his raw red eyes. Beth, he kept thinking. Dear God, what am I going to do without you? All my fault. “A timer wouldn’t be practical. They wouldn’t know what time to set it for, when anybody would be home.”

Esperanza looked more troubled.

“It would have to be somebody watching the house, holding a detonator, waiting for the right time to push the button,” Decker said. “Maybe someone with binoculars on Sun Mountain. Maybe one of the people lingering on the road, pretending to be interested in what happened last night.”

“I have police officers talking to everybody in the area,” Esperanza said.

“Too late. Whoever pushed the button is long gone.”

“Or maybe an electronic signal in the area happened to have the same frequency the detonators were set to. Maybe the bombs went off by mistake,” Esperanza said.

“No. The detonators would have needed a sequence of two different frequencies in order for them to go off. They would have been set to frequencies that weren’t common in this area.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about this,” Esperanza said.

“I read about this stuff somewhere. A lot of it’s just common sense.”

“Is it?”

Someone was approaching, footsteps heavy. Decker looked up and saw Sanchez stop in front of them.

“The fire chief says the wreckage has cooled enough for him to get close,” Sanchez told Esperanza. “According to him, there wouldn’t have been so much fire unless the bombs were incendiaries.”

“I figured that much already.” With effort, Esperanza stood. His long hair was singed. His jeans and denim shirt were grimy, laced with holes made by sparks. “What can the fire chief tell us that we
don’t
know?”

“He and his crew have started searching for the body. He says, with the adobe walls and the brick and tile floors, there wasn’t as much to bum as in a wood-frame house. That’ll make the search easier. So far, they haven’t found any sign of her.”

“Is there anything else?” Esperanza sounded frustrated. “Yes, but...” Sanchez glanced at Decker, obviously not comfortable speaking in front of him.

“What is it?” Decker came to his feet. Adrenaline shot through him. “What aren’t you saying?”

Sanchez turned to Esperanza. “Maybe we should go over to the cruiser. There’s something we need to talk about.”

“No,” Decker said. “You’re not keeping
anything
from me. Whatever you have to say, you say it right here.” Sanchez looked uncertainly toward Esperanza. “Is that okay with you?”

Esperanza raised his shoulders. “Maybe Mr. Decker will share what
he
knows with us if
we
share with him. What have you got?”

“Something weird. You told me to assign officers to question people in the area—neighbors who might have been outside, someone who might have been walking by, busybodies who’ve been hanging around, curious about what happened last night, anybody who might have seen the explosions.” Esperanza anticipated. “And our men found someone who can help us?”